New State of Mind

Research

I rushed home after school and sprinted to my room in order to avoid my parents and my younger brother, Peter, who were all sitting in the living room attached to the T.V. screen. The advantage of not being an only child is that I can sneak away and my parents don't really care that much. Even if I was an only child they still wouldn't pay any attention to me because their greatest concern is which club they were going to go to that night. This resulted in me having to deal with their hangovers the next morning and making sure that they get to work on time so that we could have money to support my parents lifestyle and pay the bills.

I quickly closed my bedroom door and immediately jumped on my computer, the only luxury that I have. I got this computer at a garage sale for 30 bucks. Turns out there wasn't anything wrong with it despite the fact that it was old and had a virus on it, but it was nothing that a good cleaning and a free online virus detection program couldn't fix. Thank goodness for the fortunate recycling of technology every couple of years which resulted in perfectly good systems being put up for sale at unbelievably low prices so that I could enjoy the privacy of surfing the internet in my room using my neighbors unprotected Wi-Fi. Seriously, why would you not put a password on your Wi-Fi, unless you wanted others to take advantage of the service that you are paying for. And in this case I am not ashamed to admit that I do mooch off of my neighbors. Anyways....

I realized very quickly that I only knew this guys' last name, so I started out by hacking into the school's mainframe and accessed my History class's attendance roster. I quickly scrolled down the list and found his full name Lane Micheal Sulley, and immediately wrote it down because I do not trust my brain too much on what it will and won't remember. For instance, one day I left the house with everything but my socks and by the end of the day my feet were not only stinking, but blistering as well. Never. Again. After writing his name down I decided to just put his name into Google and I found almost nothing. He didn't have any social media, which is almost unheard of anymore. His name didn't pop up anywhere on any school related sites, which means he does nothing with his time, not only does our newspaper cover school events, it also covers events happening in the city. My name has randomly popped up on a couple of articles because I attended this or that party. But there was nothing on Lane Sulley. The one thing I did find though, an extensive criminal record. After finding nothing on this boy on Google, I hacked into his personal school file and looked at his history which so far this year has included an in school suspension and numerous warnings of possible expulsion from the school. He also has gotten in trouble for breaking and entering, illegal consumption of alcohol, vandalism, stealing, and even a restraining order because he shot his next door neighbor in the leg with a BB gun, but passed it all off as an accident (I read the police report on that one because it was just so interesting.) This guy has gotten himself into all kinds of trouble, which just means that either he is not mentally sane or he is quickly on the path to becoming a psycho murder. Another great reason why I should try and be nice to him, and why I need to figure out what is so strange about him.

But all things aside, this guy is not only strange, but he is also dealing with some dangerous anger management problems. His criminal record just made me strangely even more curious, so I decided to try and find his address just so I could find out if he had any family that I could dig dirt up on and I discovered that his address wasn't on his school file. That is when I got the insane idea to try to follow him home, because when I want to find out things about someone, I don't stop until I know everything I can.

All through Math I was on edge, prepared to fully confront Lane Sulley and see if he lies to me about certain things I know to be true like his age. The bell rang to signal the start of the passing period and as I got closer to my History class my stomach was knotting up and I almost felt sick. Miley, you have got to snap out of it, I told myself. Then I bolted into the classroom and hastily found my seat in the back of the classroom. And right as the bell was ringing in strolled Lane, and his facial expression was neutral boredom bordering on almost a smug look of contentment at the fact that the teacher couldn't say he was tardy because he made it in just before the bell stopped ringing.